I finally saw Ang Lee‘s Gemini Man last night, and wouldn’t you know I’d pick a screening that didn’t show the 4K high-frame-rate 3D version? I saw a plain old 2D at 24 fps version, but it looked fine. And I was never in any serious pain during the 117 minute running time.

Yes, Gemini Man has a lousy 30% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but I found it to be an agreeable so-whatter. It diverts, it moves along, it’s not overly irksome. Especially during the first 25 to 35 minutes.

Will Smith does a reasonably good job of playing two versions of an ace professional assassin named Henry Brogan, or more specifically his own 50 year-old self along with a digitally composed 20something version (aka “Junior”). And I like the deft way that Lee cuts away from the grisly stuff from time to time.

I didn’t “turn” on Gemini Man, exactly, but it gradually let me down, and I found myself sinking deeper and deeper into my seat. It gradually hit me, in other words, that the story was kinda routine in a flat-footed way. There were basically too many cooks working on too many drafts for too many years, and so the script feels over-written, over-honed, over-edited, ground into mush. It feels like re-heated leftovers.

The credited writers are David Benioff, Billy Ray and Darren Lemke but Andrew Niccol, David Benioff, Brian Helgeland, Jonathan Hensleigh, Stephen J. Rivele and Christopher Wilkinson also took whacks at it.

But the de-aging VFX are better than The Irishman‘s in one respect. In Martin Scorsese‘s world-class film the face and hair styles give to Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci are definitely younger but the bodies are their own — older, chunkier, less than athletic. Will Smith’s “Junior”, on the other hand, is slim and lean and a physique of a workout Nazi.

That Greenpeace banner allegedly hanging outside Trump Tower in Las Vegas and lambasting Donald Trump for betraying the Kurds is presumedly a deepfake. Not to diminish the horror of the Syrian-Kurd-ISIS situation, but as long as we’re talking deepfakes I prefer the below variation.

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My heart goes out to DVD Beaver‘s Gary W. Tooze, who can’t even pay his heating bill. The world can be a cold (i.e., heartless) and brutal place, but the bell began tolling on physical media big-time six or seven years ago. I’m stunned that Studio Canal, Warner Archive, Network and Shout! Factory won’t even send Tooze review copies of their Blurays. DVD Beaver has been a necessary home-video pit stop for a long, long time. What kind of people are running these outfits?

Yes, Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz‘s The Peanut Butter Falcon, a Down Syndrome buddy dramedy, got rave notices when it opened a couple of months ago. And yes, it has the right kind of cast for an indie, Mud-like venture of this sort — Shia LaBeouf, Dakota Johnson, John Hawkes, Bruce Dern, Jon Bernthal, Thomas Haden Church. I plan to watch within two or three days, or certainly by the weekend. It begins streaming on 11.5. My bad, but I’ll soon make amends.

As I understand this latest development, Donald Trump and his attorneys have decided to stonewall any and all attempts from House Democrats to obtain pertinent testimony or documents in their ongoing impeachment inquiry. Basically a blanket “eff you” posture. This in itself would and should add another article of impeachment along with the “get the Bidens” Ukraine whistleblower thing.

The bottom line (and please inform if I’m missing something) is that Adam Schiff and other pro-impeachment House Democrats don’t have the power or the cojones to force Trump to do anything. They’ll strongly protest, of course, and will eventually vote for impeachment, but we all know the drill about the Republican-dominated Senate being all but certain to vote it down.

Excerpt: “Trump administration lawyers and aides have spent days puzzling over how to respond to the impeachment inquiry, and [now this] abrupt move suggests that the president’s team has calculated that he is better off risking the House’s ire — and even an impeachment article focused on the obstruction — than setting a precedent for cooperation with an investigation they have strenuously argued is illegitimate.

“The strategy, if it holds, carries substantial risk to the White House. Privately, some Republicans had urged the White House to allow witnesses…to appear, in order to deflate Democratic accusations of a cover-up and offer a public rationale for the president’s actions toward Ukraine. Now, some Republicans worry, Democrats have more fodder to argue publicly that Mr. Trump has something to hide.”

I’m more of a Mel’s Drive-In type, certainly alongside alternate options like Middleburg’s Red Fox tavern. I bought this little pin on the spot a few minutes ago. Mel’s is plain and beautiful with a perfect indoor climate on hot days, and I adore the absence of tasting menus. On the other hand I’ve been in love with Pier Luigi in Rome since my first visit there in ‘01. It’s a little complicated.

Robert Downey, Jr.: “It is this very large, multi-head hydra at this point. And according to [Martin] Scorsese, it’s not cinema — gotta take a look at that. And by the way, there’s a lot to be said for how these genre movies [have] degraded the art form of cinema…and you come in like a stomping beast and eliminate the competition in such a demonstrative way, it’s phenomenal. ”

Yes, elbowing aside the proverbial Scorsese brand of cinema has been phenomenal — he’s not wrong about that.

Hollywood Reporter get-around guy Scott Feinberg polled a fair number of Academy members about Joker, and got a fair number of mixed responses.

HE favorite: “I don’t know if it should be banned or it should be given every award.”

HE 2nd favorite (male member of the producer’s branch): “I saw this one at the Academy. I probably wouldn’t have seen it at a public theater. But wow, what a movie, huh? It’s hard to know where to start. Joaquin deserves an Oscar nomination — he blows the doors off the fucking place — and the cinematography was fantastic. Even so, I sure don’t want to see it again. I’m not an expert on mental health, but I’m sure there are a lot of people who will see the insane dancing after the killing as a sexy thing to do, and the worshipping of him at the end could also seem pretty cool to an insane person. As someone who was once held at gunpoint, I can’t get some of the images of gun violence out of my head. I’m very torn on this movie, but I’m glad I saw it.”

Variety‘s Jenelle Riley has reported that A24 will push Lighthouse lead Robert Pattinson for Best Actor and Willem Dafoe for Best Supporting Actor. Which strikes me as a slight “what?”

The size of their parts is fairly equal in terms of screen time and intensity, but if you ask me Dafoe’s performance is far more assertive and jabbing. He’s the feisty provocateur while Pattinson is mostly doing the simmering slow-boil thing with the death-ray glare. In short it’s mostly Dafoe’s show — between them he’s the one with the real shot. Plus he’s been nominated so often in this category without a win.

But A24 didn’t want to under-celebrate Pattinson’s work as so he’s up for a Best Actor nomination. Face it — “Rbatz” is looking at an uphill situation in the competitive company of Joker‘s Joaquin Phoenix, Marriage Story‘s Adam Driver, The Irishman‘s Robert De Niro, Pain and Glory‘s Antonio Banderas, Uncut Gems‘ Adam Sandler and The Two Popes‘ Jonathan Pryce.

I’ve been meaning to praise one of the strongest and most affecting aspects of Joker, which is Hildur Guonadóttir‘s musical score. It taps right into the primal, painful realm of Arthur Fleck, and never stops conveying that bad stuff is happening right now and that worse is on the way. A lot of bass, viola and cello. Guonadóttir says he wrote “much” of the score without having seen Todd Phillips‘ film. She also composed the excellent score for Stefano Sollima‘s Sicario: Day of the Soldado.

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